15 Most Popular Social Networks in The World

Rosy January 10, 2021 | 01:39

Social networking sites have proved their important role in both the work and life of people in the world. Let’s join with us to explore 15 popular social networking sites so far.

15 Most Popular Social Networks in The World

Photo: Reviewsxp

1. Facebook

Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, all of whom were students at Harvard University. Facebook became the largest social network in the world, with more than one billion users, and about half that number were using Facebook every day. The company’s headquarters are in Menlo Park, California.

Access to Facebook is free of charge, and the company earns most of its money from advertisements on the Web site. New users can create profiles, upload photos, join a preexisting group, and start new groups. The site has many components, including Timeline, space on each user’s profile page where users can post their content and friends can post messages; Status, which enables users to alert friends to their current location or situation; and News Feed, which informs users of changes to their friends’ profiles and status. Users can chat with each other and send each other private messages. Users can signal their approval of content on Facebook with the Like button, a feature that also appears on many other Web sites.

Facebook is the most popular social media network in the U.S

The attractiveness of Facebook stems in part from cofounder Zuckerberg’s insistence from the very beginning that members be transparent about who they are; users are forbidden from adopting false identities. The company’s management argued that transparency is necessary for forming personal relationships, sharing ideas and information, and building up society as a whole. It also noted that the bottom-up, peer-to-peer connectivity among Facebook users makes it easier for businesses to connect their products with consumers.

A survey by Sproutsocial showing key user demographics for the average Facebook user

1. Users 65 years and older are the fastest-growing group on Facebook

2. Fewer teens are using Facebook now than in previous years

3. Only 10% of Facebook users live in the US or Canada

4. 74% of high-income earners are Facebook users

5. 1.62 billion users visit Facebook daily.

6. 88% of Facebook users are on the platform to stay in contact with friends and family

7. Highest traffic occurs mid-day Wednesday and Thursday

8. In 2020, the average daily time on Facebook will remain flat

9. Facebook Stories has 300 million active users daily

10. 53% of adults on Facebook don’t understand how their newsfeed displays posts

2. YouTube

YouTube is one of the most popular online platforms in the United States. The video-sharing site serves as a forum for entertainers, commentators, businesses, and others, and Americans use it in a variety of ways, from getting the news to learning new skills, according to Pew Research.

At the same time, YouTube has faced scrutiny – as other online platforms have – about issues including online harassment, misinformation, and the impact of technology on children.

In the third quarter of 2020, it was found that 77 percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years accessed YouTube.

Photo: Buffer

With over 126 million unique monthly viewers, YouTube is by far the most popular online video property in the United States, Statista cited.

The platform’s mobile presence is also significant, as YouTube consistently ranks as the most popular mobile app in the United States based on audience reach. The most popular YouTube partner channels consistently attract dozens of millions of viewers and the top YouTube partner channel in the United States as of March 2019 was music label Universal Music Group (UMG), with over 50 million unique viewers.

Music is one of the most popular types of content on YouTube and as of 2019, half of the U.S. population used YouTube to listen to music on a weekly basis. Music videos frequently go viral and attract a large amount of attention upon release: it is not uncommon for popular releases to rack up 100 million video views within a week. Korean pop phenomenon BTS currently holds the record for the fastest viral video to reach 100 million YouTube streams. Their August 2020 release “Dynamite” only needed one day to accomplish the feat.

Which social media platforms does Trump seek to join after blocked from Twitter and Facebook?

After President Donald Trump's ban from BigTech, some small, conservative social media platforms have witnessed a surging number of users.

Parler jumps to No. 1 on App Store after Facebook and Twitter ban President Trump

The social network, Parler, a network that mimics Twitter, is now the number one app in Apple’s app store and Gab, another conservative-backed service, claimed that it was seeing an explosion in the number of signups to its web-based platform as well.

Parler saw approximately 210,000 installs globally on Friday 1/8, up 281% from approximately 55,000 on 1/7, according to data from the analytics service Sensor Tower. “In the U.S., the app saw approximately 182,000 first-time downloads on 1/8, up 355% from about 40,000 installs on 1/7. Since Wednesday, the app has seen approximately 268,000 installs from across U.S. app stores,” a press rep from Sensor Tower wrote in an email to Techcrunch.

Top 15 most popular social networks in the World

The social network, Parler

Both Parler and Gab have billed themselves as havens for free speech, with what’s perhaps the most lax content moderation online.

On Friday night, Google said that it would be removing Parler from their Play Store immediately — suspending the app until the developers committed to a moderation and enforcement policy that could handle objectionable content on the platform.

It has already been removed from Google’s Play store and Apple is considering suspending the social media app as well if it does not add some content moderation features.

3. Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks worldwide. The photo-sharing app most recently reported 500 million daily active users and one billion monthly active users worldwide. As of 2020, there were almost 112 million monthly active Instagram users in the United States, and this figure is projected to increase to nearly 120.3 million in 2023, Statista.com reported.

Photo: Businessinsider

Due to its visual nature, Instagram is a popular social network for brands and celebrities to engage with online audiences and fashion and beauty are two especially popular content categories on Instagram. The most popular Instagram influencers in this segment include reality TV personalities Kim Kardashian as well as sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner. Kylie Jenner has managed to leverage her TV and Instagram fame into a successful makeup brand, making her the highest-earning celebrity under 30 on the 2018 Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Her annual income during the 12 months ending June 2018 amounted to 166.5 million U.S. dollars.

As of November 2020, 33.1 percent of U.S. Instagram users were between 25 and 34 years old. The second-largest user group was 18 to 24-year-olds with a 22.8 percent share. Overall, more than 56 percent of Instagram audiences in the United States were female.

4. Messenger

Photo: Messenger.

Facebook Messenger is an instant messaging feature built into Facebook. Messenger originally launched in 2011 and its success gave rise to a dedicated application and website that emerged in 2014. The application and website is an instant messaging service that connects to the Facebook database and has replaced the in-app Facebook messaging service. It allows Facebook users to connect with each other and send instant messages, emoji, photos, videos, and perform other light tasks.

With a recent update, you can now send money to friends within Facebook Messenger. You can get the weather and place product orders with the help of Facebook Bots, and you can also get a quick ride with the integration of Uber and Lyft.

There were 427 700 Messenger users in the United States of America in April 2020, which accounted for 0.1% of its entire population. The majority of them were men - 52.9%. People aged 25 to 34 were the largest user group (131 000). The highest difference between men and women occurs among people aged 25 to 34, where men lead by 23 000.

This number of Messenger users in the United States is projected to grow to 138.1 million users in 2022.

Gab was receiving over 10,000 new users every hour

Gab, a social networking website popular among the far-right, was founded in 2016 by Andrew Torba who touts it as a vehicle for free speech. The layout of Gab is similar to Twitter.

In October 2018, Vox reported that Gab had 465,000 to 800,000 users. In July 2020, Fox Business reported that, as of April, the site had over 1.1 million new cumulative registered accounts and 3.7 million monthly visitors worldwide.

Social Network Gab

Torba reported that site traffic jumped 40%. On Saturday, the site tweeted that it was gaining over 10,000 users an hour, and had received "12m visits in past 12 hours" just before 11 a.m.

In 2017, Google removed Gab's app from the Google Play Store for violating it's hate speech policy. It was rejected from Apple's App Store for related reasons.

5. Twitter

Twitter is a social media site for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more. What makes Twitter different from most other social media sites is that it has a strong emphasis on real-time information — things that are happening right now. For example, one of the defining moments in Twitter history is when Janis Krums tweeted the image of a plane that landed in the Hudson River when he was on the ferry to pick the passengers up.

Another unique characteristic of Twitter is that it only allows 280 characters in a tweet (140 for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese), unlike most social media sites that have a much higher limit.

Photo: Techcrunch

Twitter is also often used as a customer service channel. According to advertisers on Twitter, more than 80 percent of social customer service requests happen on Twitter. And Salesforce calls Twitter “the New 1-800 Number for Customer Service“. There are many social media customer service tools, such as Buffer Reply, available now to help you manage social customer service conversations.

Twitter is particularly popular in the United States. As of October 2020, the microblogging service had an audience reach of 68.7 million users. Japan and India were ranked second and third with 51.9 and 18.9 million users respectively. Global Twitter usage As of the fourth quarter of 2019, Twitter had 152 million monetizable daily active users worldwide. The most-followed Twitter accounts include celebrities such as Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and former U.S. president Barack Obama.

6. Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the largest visual social networks, in which it is possible to share images, videos, infographics, and all kinds of content that are predominantly visual. In addition, most users who have an online project or are thinking of creating it use it as a « drawer of ideas ».

Its format allows you to organize, file, and share your « pins » (publications) by topics, interests or hobbies, among other options.

Therefore, it is not a social network to use. Its unique style has liked a lot since its inception, hence its great success (especially in English-speaking countries), as it is one of the platforms with a higher rate of growth in recent years.

Photo: Microsoft

It’s likely that, although you didn’t know what Pinterest is before when you heard its name, you would have wondered why it’s called.

It is called this way because its creators have digitized the typical cork wall where you can hang photos with a pin. Hence its main feature: sharing multimedia content in the style of Instagram.

In other words, its name is composed, etymologically, by « Pin » (thumbtack) and « Interest » (interesting).

The number of US Pinterest users as of July 2020 is 99.4 million. The US is a formidable force as always. Pinterest is most popular in the land of the free, but the rest of the world is not far behind. More and more people wish to explore Pinterest and take advantage of all it has to offer. Most new sign-ups are from outside the US, as every other nationality tries to catch up to the leader.

7. Reddit

Reddit is basically a large group of forums in which registered users can talk about almost anything you can imagine, from news, to pop culture, to technology, to comics, to film, to literature, to the weirdest things in the world, including Not Safe For Work stuff, Tomsguide said.

There are subreddits (i.e. dedicated forums) for pretty much anything under the sun (and above). Subreddits, however, have different levels of engagement so it’s great to research to see if there are popular subreddits that your brand can be part of. For example, r/socialmedia tends to be pretty quiet so we are rarely on Reddit.

In the United States, 26.4 million people are using Reddit monthly. Since they were founded in 2005, Reddit has continued to grow its user base. eMarketer defines someone as a user if they have an account and log on at least once a month. However, it’s important to note that the website is not limited to those that have logged on. Anybody can read the news, watch videos, and discover subreddits, so the reach can be even higher than anticipated!

8. Snapchat

Photo: Techcrunch

Being one of the most popular social networks worldwide and a favorite among younger online audiences, Snapchat is an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. According to industry estimates, Snapchat’s 2019 advertising revenue is forecast to amount to over 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, up from 1.53 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Snapchat is a mobile-first social network with the majority of visits generated via mobile phones. According to U.S. Snapchat users, the main reason for using the platform was to keep in contact with friends and family.

Snapchat’s vanishing photo-sharing function has popularized the sharing of everyday photos in a story stream, a setup that has since also been adopted by other photo and messaging apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Despite the competition, Snapchat users are among the most engaged – a total of 48 percent of U.S. Snapchat users post content to the app on a weekly basis. Only WhatsApp and Facebook can boast a more active audience.

As of July 2020, the United States had the biggest Snapchat user base in the world, with an audience of over 101 million users. India ranked in second place with a Snapchat audience base of 33.8 million users. The photo-sharing platform is projected to surpass 365 million global users in 2023.

9. WhatsApp

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Launched in 2009, WhatsApp is one of the most popular texts and voice messaging apps. It’s free to use, and you can send messages, make voice calls, and host video chats on both desktop and mobile devices.

Part of what makes this app appealing is that it works on various phone and computer operating systems, helping with messaging. It can also take advantage of Wi-Fi and cellular data to make one-on-one or group calls.

WhatsApp uses your phone’s cellular or Wi-Fi connection to facilitate messaging and voice calling to nearly anyone on the planet, alone or in a group and is especially nice for families and small collaborative workgroups. The app lets you make calls, and send and receive messages, documents, photos, and videos.

WhatsApp is completely free — with no fees or subscriptions — because it uses your phone’s 5G, 4G, 3G, 2G, EDGE, or Wi-Fi connection instead of your cell plan’s voice minutes or text plan. If you’re connected via Wi-Fi, it won’t eat into your data plan either. Its popularity is sustained by its support for worldwide free calling, even if the people chatting are not in the same country.

There are 68.1 million US WhatsApp users as of September 2019. We can account for its high position here simply to the large size of its population and high internet penetration.

10. Tumblr

Photo: Techcrunch

Tumblr is a New York-based internet platform, part microblog, part social network, which was created by web developers David Karp and Marco Arment and launched in 2007. Due to the company’s almost immediate success and popularity, it was acquired by technology giant Yahoo! Inc. in June 2013 for the sum of 1.1 billion U.S. dollars. As of July 2019, the platform had surpassed 472 million registered accounts. As of the same period, the website had almost 376 million unique visitors worldwide - a stark decline since December 2018, when the company decided to ban adult content on its platform. This decision has been Tumblr's undoing, as visitor numbers and community engagement dropped amongst public backlash. In August 2019, Automattic (parent company of blogging platform WordPress) purchased Tumblr for less than 3 million U.S. dollars, a far cry from the billion-dollar acquisition in 2013.

As of the third quarter of 2020, ten percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years used the blogging platform Tumblr. Only three percent of internet users aged 56 years and older reported the same.

11. Tik Tok

TikTok is a short-form, video-sharing app that allows users to create and share 15-second videos, on any topic. TikTok maintains a separate app for the Chinese market, known as Duyin, which has over 300 million active monthly users. The new app’s logo is a combination of the Musical.ly and Duyin logos.

The TikTok app is based on the same short-form video concept but is much broader in scope and unlike Musical.ly does not only focus on lip-syncing to music. The TikTok app offers users a wide selection of sounds and song snippets, along with the option to add special effects and filters. There is also an option to directly add videos created on your phone.

Photo: Time

TikTok added the reactions feature which allows users to record their reactions to videos and share them. TikTok has also added a digital well-being feature that alerts users when they spend over two hours on the app.

TikTok has about 80 million monthly active users in the United States. 60% are female, 40% are male. 60% are between the ages of 16-24. 26% are between the ages of 25-44. 80% are between the ages of 16-34. This data comes straight from TikTok.

12. Line

Photo: Microsoft

LINE is a Japanese instant messenger app, produced by an eponymous corporation – the Japanese subsidiary of Korea’s Naver Corporation.

In Asia, the most popular instant messenger apps have evolved to become platforms in their own right. On these, users can play games, send money, and shop – and much more. The app was originally developed as an emergency solution for the company (then known as NHN Japan) employees during the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011.

LINE went public in a dual US-Japan listing in 2016. As of September 2019, there were 3.15 million LINE users in the U.S.

13. WeChat

WeChat was launched in 2011 as Weixin – Mandarin for ‘micro-message’. As the name suggests, it originally functioned as a simple messenger app – a Chinese equivalent to WhatsApp in essence.

WeChat was developed by and belongs to Chinese tech behemoth Tencent Holdings –one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth well over $500 billion as of mid-May 2020. Other names in the Tencent stable include QQ Messenger and Riot Games (League of Legends), among many others. It also holds various significant stakes in other international app names (Snapchat, Fortnite).

Like WhatsApp, the WeChat app has evolved considerably since those early days. Video clips and functionality to find other users followed, then voice and video calls, as well as Facebook-like Moments feed. WeChat’s development would grow more innovative after this. Leveraging Tencent’s involvement in gaming (which would get deeper in years to come), it added games integration, and presciently, it also moved into the digital payments field – an area in which WhatsApp is trying to follow in the Indian market.

As of September 2019, Wechat users in the United States were 1.48 million.

14. Telegram

Photo: SCMP

Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security, it’s super-fast, simple, and free. You can use Telegram on all your devices at the same time — your messages sync seamlessly across any number of your phones, tablets, or computers.

With Telegram, you can send messages, photos, videos, and files of any type (doc, zip, mp3, etc), as well as create groups for up to 200,000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences. You can write to your phone contacts and find people by their usernames. As a result, Telegram is like SMS and email combined — and can take care of all your personal or business messaging needs. In addition to this, we support end-to-end encrypted voice calls.

15. Viber

Viber is free to download the app that allows users to make free calls, send texts, pictures, and video messages to other Viber users. It works on both mobile and computer and can be used to connect with people around the world. As of February 2015, the messaging app claims 236 million active monthly users. Similar to WhatsApp, popular features for young users include picture sharing, video, and group messaging.

The app can be downloaded directly to your phone or computer, users simply need to enter their phone number to get started. Viber uses your mobile phone as your identity. To verify your account, Viber will send you a PIN via SMS to activate your account. Once activated, the app links to your contact list to find and connect with friends.

As of October 2018, Viber users in the United States generated an average of 9.8 monthly usage sessions, ranking the messaging app behind LINE, Kik, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger in terms of user engagement.

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